Confessions of a Wall Street Insider

“THIS EMAIL ADDRESS IS CURRENTLY AT a re-education camp for the indeterminate future and will not be checked. Please try back once its lesson has been learned. Mike.”

If you had sent me an email on or around December 11, 2011, that’s the automated answer you would have received.

In the New York Times, journalist Peter Lattman, who was reaching out to me, referred to my response as “wry.” Wry, indeed. Let’s try a tongue-in-cheek attempt to divert all the other emotions I was feeling, such as “devastated,” “destroyed,” “distraught,” “despondent,” “bitter,” “outraged,” “terrified,” and even, in my darkest moments, when the world seemed such a dark and horrible place, “borderline suicidal.” I admit that there were a few moments during the trial when, with an unsettling clarity, I could understand why poor Ephraim Karpel* had hanged himself with a leather belt in that small subleased office on lower Fifth Avenue, hounded by Federal agents, ruined professionally, and driven to despair.

If I had been a fatherless lush, living in a child-free vacuum, then who knows—although deep down I do know. Why? Simple. For all the suffering my poor parents had been through since my arrest two years earlier, to cap it off with their son washing up against a jetty on Long Island Sound, bloated, with a belly full of aspirin and vodka, or swinging, blue-faced, from a chandelier, would have been the ultimate act of thoughtless selfishness. But there were my children to think of. Three little kids, who had already lived through this gut-wrenching ordeal.

They were what kept me going—my parents and my children—through this terrifying and confusing time. I could not let them down. Any more than I already had.

If you know anything about me, you already know that I was found guilty. Here’s how it shook out.

Throughout my trial, my defense team called only one witness on our behalf, but it was the FBI’s lead case agent, Jan Trigg. Please consider for a moment how unprecedented this was. The lead FBI case agent is supposed to be the linchpin of the government’s case. She was the one who captained the investigation and built the Fed’s case from scratch. We blew up the government’s case on cross exam, either shredding their witnesses or mostly getting them to admit they had no idea who I was or that they didn’t believe I was a part of the conspiracy. And then, the coup d’etat was calling Agent Trigg again as a witness for our side, and getting her to reiterate under oath on the stand what she had admitted under cross-exam when she’d testified on the government’s behalf.

“Do you need some time to review the transcripts and evidence?” Sommer had asked her.

Sommer had Agent Trigg in an armlock, and she was doing everything she could to squirm out.

“Perhaps, your Honor, this would be a good time for the morning break to allow Agent Trigg to refresh her memory,” Sommer suggested with a tinge of sarcasm.

“I think that’s a good idea if no one objects—let’s break for fifteen,” Sullivan noted, dismissing the jury and calling my lawyer’s bluff.

Upon return, Sommer repeated the question before Agent Trigg, to make sure the jury really grasped the implication of what she was being asked:

“Can you show me one wiretap, one body wire, one phone call, one email or instant message where Zvi Goffer, or anyone, passes my client Mr. Kimelman inside information and he trades on it?”

After a few seconds of silence, Trigg reluctantly admitted, “No, I can’t.”

I know it wasn’t the movies, but amid the murmuring in the gallery that followed her answer, I couldn’t understand why Sommer didn’t just leap up and shout: “Your honor, I make an immediate motion for dismissal of all charges against my client!”

I imagined Sullivan pounding his gavel and asking for “Order in the court” before asking the prosecutors if they had any other evidence against me.* It was a pleasant fantasy. Fleeting, but pleasant.

Despite the above—despite the government not even calling Franz Tudor, who wore a wire and sat next to me on the trading desk for over a year, doing his best to incriminate me; despite a year-plus of phone taps, and wire taps, and several informants coming up with nothing; and despite Zvi having done everything he was accused of before he became a partner with Incremental, the jury didn’t look past the dollar signs. They were blinded by the money. That, and the fact that Zvi and I had become partners and friends at Incremental. Then they offered the damning conclusion: “Guilty.”

We were “Wall Street,” in a country still feeling the sting of the recession. We were looked on like French nobles after the storming of the Bastille. I could write about the legal minutiae that happened before the verdict, how there were several legal firsts in this trial, but in the end it’d be fascinating to about fifty people. You’re likely not one of them.

Sommer wasn’t even there for my verdict. He had a kidney stone and was in the hospital, so we put it on speaker for him. Probably the only way to make it worse to hear that your client has just been convicted is to hear it in a hospital with a catheter in your penis. It was just Moe and me at the table.

Just as we were tried in triplicate, so did we hear that we were guilty. The jury said that Zvi was guilty, that Nu was guilty, and that I was guilty. One two three. We were three of what would eventually be twenty-four persons who were either convicted by juries or who pled guilty in the Galleon and Incremental cases.

I don’t have precise memories of how Zvi or Nu reacted, or even how I did. I was disappointed and numb and not thinking clearly enough to be very observant.

I was not immediately taken into custody, and would have several months more of freedom until Judge Sullivan finally rendered his sentence.

That meant months to let whatever traces of hope and optimism I still had fizzle and spark and sputter. And life still went on. The week after my verdict there were games for the Little League team I was coaching. It was also Father’s Day. I had to put on my coach/daddy hat and smile, while inside it felt like the world had ended and I could barely breathe.

Two days after the trial ended, Lisa came bounding onto our outside deck where I was seated, staring at nothing and trying to calculate for the thousandth time how my life had reached this point. She was smiling, which totally unnerved me as I hadn’t seen Lisa with even a hint of a smile in weeks.

“I’ve got an early Father’s Day present for you,” she said mysteriously, which now really had me alarmed. “So I’m in Stop & Shop with Phin getting some groceries when I see someone who looks familiar. We pass in one aisle, and then in the next aisle. When we pass a third time, I realize who it is. Juror number nine!”

“Nope. It’s definitely him and I think he recognizes me too. This time when we walk by each other I say hello and tell him I think we know each other. I introduce myself as Lisa Kimelman. I say ‘I believe you were one of the jurors on the case that was just decided.’ Then I ask him if I could just ask him one question. He’s clearly a little uncomfortable. But I just jump right in and ask it: ‘Can you tell me how you came to the verdict of guilty against Michael?’”

I’m blown away at this point. I didn’t think she still cared about the case. Frankly, I’m amazed she had the nerve to confront one of the jurors. I wondered if I would have had her courage in the same situation.

“After giving about a half dozen ‘umms’ and ‘uhhhs’ he said, ‘There were just a lot of really bad tapes against that guy Zvi Goffer.’”

My face fell, and I nodded. The answer was crushing, but not unexpected. Guilt by association is always your biggest fear in a situation like mine. Turns out I was right to be afraid.

“Please,” Lisa said, with an expression that screamed, Give me some credit, willya? “I’m not going to let him wiggle off that easily. I said, ‘I know there were some bad things in those tapes when it came to Zvi Goffer. But I’m talking about my husband, Michael Kimelman. Would you mind just telling me what was compelling in the evidence against him? We’d really like to know what swayed the jury.’”

“More ‘umms’ and ‘uhhhs’ and then finally he kinda goes, ‘Just the tapes against Zvi and him being in business with that guy. The fact he was in business with that guy. I guess that was it.’”

“So then I asked him if he knew that the government was going to ask for a sentence of five years. He looked genuinely surprised. He said they’d spoken in the jury room about how white collar guys always get a slap on the wrist. That it’s always a year or two, tops. Then he walked off.”

I shook my head. Everything I had feared, everything Moe and Sommer had warned me about, had come to pass. The evidence, in the end, hadn’t mattered. Guilt by association had. My decision to go into business with a firm even slightly associated with Zvi Goffer had. My decision to trust Zvi had.

I was long past the point of feeling any anger. Lisa’s remarkable tale just left me numb.

This juror had been one of only two jurors that my legal team had deemed even potentially “decent” and capable of making a rational, objective decision. And yet he had made this sort of decision. Used this sort of thinking. We had never had a chance.

No good deed goes unpunished. While I was still awaiting sentencing, the juror went to the FBI and Judge Sullivan and filed a formal complaint saying he had been harassed and intimidated by my wife. (After proxy-interviewing Lisa and the juror, Sullivan decided that a five foot four, 100-pound woman holding an eleven-month-old infant in her arms had not been a significant threat to a six foot two, 220-pound man in a public grocery store. Not filing criminal charges against Lisa—for innocently asking what anyone else in her position would’ve wanted to know—was maybe the one time the system showed itself to be reasonable, objective, and decent.)

With my verdict decided in June, I had to suffer through an entire summer to wait and see what Judge Sullivan had in store for me before I was finally sentenced in October. Sullivan had the power, under some established guidelines, to put me away for as little as a few months, or for as much as several years. The government had asked him to give me fifty-seven months. There was some genuine wiggle room here, but given the way Sullivan had behaved during the trial, my hopes were not up. I wasn’t sleeping well, and was inhaling liters of wine and vodka.

I would have to read a statement at the sentencing. Sommer wrote something for me, but it seemed a little too careful and perfect. Besides, I wanted to write something myself. Conflicted about what exactly to say, I decided to compose two versions. I wanted to write something that essentially refused to admit guilt for something I wasn’t guilty of, while acknowledging that I respected the judge and the jury’s decision. It was a very fine line. The standard playbook says that in these sort of situations, you’ll get the best result if you throw yourself down in front of the bench, beg for mercy and, prostrate, acknowledge your guilt. Show remorse and the judge will be more lenient.

As you might imagine, Zvi had already taken this angle, giving it his own sleazy spin. Zvi had written a letter to the judge, claiming that he had seen the light, would forego any appeal in his case, and that now his former, greedy self was no more.

To me, it seemed an obvious and pathetic attempt to manipulate the judge. Sullivan didn’t buy it, and sentenced Zvi to ten years. This was more than double the plea he had been offered initially. For a short time, it was the longest insider trading sentence in American history. Two weeks later and four floors down, in Courtroom 17B, Judge Holwell would slap Raj with eleven years.

Raj had made over $63 million talking directly to people on Boards of Directors and other “classic” insiders. Zvi, on the other hand, made $380K by getting secondhand information of questionable value from a slip-and-fall lawyer in Brooklyn who was fed that information from his friend working at a law firm, and by eavesdropping at lunches. And yet, amazingly, the end result was almost identical. Laws are supposed to be uniformly applied. Clearly, from a defendant’s perspective, it was better to have Judge Holwell than Judge Sullivan presiding over your case. Zvi would go on to file an appeal several weeks later, all revealing that his transformation and contrition were about as honest and sincere as everything else he’d ever said in his life.

Nu took the opposite tack. At his sentencing, when the judge asked Nu if he would like to address the court, he barely stood up to offer a simple “No,” and sat right back down again. I learned later that Nu was so outraged by Zvi’s sentence that he had to be talked into standing at all.

Fortunately for Nu, his approach worked significantly better than Zvi’s insincere change of heart. Nu was facing five to seven years under the guidelines. Sullivan sentenced him to three. Nu was the only one who fared about the same going to trial as he would have done had he pled to the charge.

I suppose Elle magazine is a respected name in the fashion world—if you respect the world of fashion, that is. I, for one, don’t. I’ve never been tempted by Savile Row suits or hand-stitched shirts from Naples. Even Brooks Brothers seems a dandified stretch. Clothes don’t make the man, in my opinion.

Anyhow, imagine my surprise—and jaw-dropping, heart-sinking shock—when I learned that Lisa had decided to pen a piece for Elle magazine just before my sentencing. She had not told me, or anyone, that she was going to do this. The absurdly long title of the article—Elle seems to play a bit fast and loose with these things—was: The Verdict: When Lisa Kimelman had to face the trial of her life (and look good for it), she found armor, and an ally, on the fifth floor of Barneys.*

The piece was about how shopping at Barney’s had allowed her to prepare herself for my trial. Needless to say, this was not the kind of publicity likely to garner me favor with a judge who seemed to have it out for me (or with a public fed up with rich, spoiled Wall Streeters). Reading the piece, I could tell that Lisa, in her way, had tried to be self-deprecating and down-to-earth. She opened by admitting that she’d only been shopping at Barney’s once before, several years earlier, with a few friends and after a couple of cocktails. She even mentioned how hard a time the sales assistant had when helping her on with a pair of jeans, growling, “You gotta tuck your fat in, girl! You tuck that fat in!”

But she also dropped the fact that her father was something of a political and financial heavyweight. And near the end of the piece she told the story of how her mother had once been seated next to Henry Kissinger, back when her husband was in the Nixon White House, and how Henry had complimented her hair.

“Oh, you can wear it too,” Connie had told America’s Metternich, taking off her wig and dangling it over the White House china.

To Lisa’s way of thinking, these were innocent facts and cute anecdotes. And to those in her social circle, they may have been. But to outsiders, they undeniably gave the impression of our trying to “clout” our way out of this. Of signaling that, ahem, we were not the sort of people to whom this was supposed to happen.

To this day, there is no way to know what sort of damage the article did, or to know whether Judge Sullivan read it (I’m inclined to think that he does not have a subscription to Elle, but I believe people who work for him might have brought it to his attention). What I can tell you with great certainty is that my legal team was very upset, and thought it would bode poorly.

I was upset too, but I also felt for my wife. Here she was, on the brink of being entirely on her own. The magazine article was a smart move as far as publicity for her catering business—which would be all she would have to sustain our family while I was away.

Yeah, it pissed me off—and yeah, I thought it was a pretty self-serving move—but no, I didn’t for one second blame her.

So there I was. After two years in purgatory, finally overlooking the abyss. I was the last of the three defendants to be sentenced. The courtroom was packed on the day of my sentencing, the energy and anticipation palpable. I had a sense of fatal resignation, a grin-and-bear-it mentality. I had made the decision to go to trial and now had to accept the outcome and face my punishment. I couldn’t risk being defiant in my statement—at least not in terms of tone or attitude. I’d seen enough of Sullivan’s “hang ’em high” tactics to know I couldn’t risk enraging him. In an attempt to brighten the mood, I slid Moe a copy of the angry version of the statement I’d written—the one I wanted to give but knew I could not give—with the actual orange Monopoly Get out of Jail Free card on top of it.

“Do I hand this to the bailiff before or after I make my statement?” I asked him.

Here is what, deep down, I wanted to say. It was sloppy and angry and full of my soul. Here is what that statement said:

My attorneys have advised me, because of the posture of the case, not to say anything. I would like to go ahead anyway and make a brief statement.

At this point in my life, I am filled with regrets.

I regret not testifying. Not having the opportunity to give my side of the story.

The consensus was you don’t testify unless you are losing the case—and at no point during the trial did I or my attorneys feel that was happening. Besides, the AUSAs in this case should have already been nominated for a best actor award in a fiction drama for their performance during the close and rebuttal—and I didn’t want to give them additional fodder to feign outrage and confusion over.

It’s easy to ask someone on the stand about a date four years ago and get an ‘I don’t know.” The lead case agent offered up some version of “I can’t recall” or “I don’t know” over fifty-eight times that I counted during one relatively brief cross exam. I can barely remember what happened last week, much less four years ago. Those non-answers would have been pounced upon during the close and rebuttal as evasions or lies.

“How could the defendant ‘forget’ making $50K or $100K in a single day? I guarantee you I would remember if I made that kind of money.”

Never mind the fact that when one manages millions of dollars, swings of this magnitude happen quite often, or that making more in a day than most jurors will make in a year, is, wrongfully, on its own, inculpatory.

While I am not guilty of insider trading, I do know that I am certainly guilty of bad judgment. I regret and am sorry for lowering my standards so far that I chose to go into and stay in business with someone whom I knew had a habit of shading the truth and of serial exaggeration. For lack of a better term, and please excuse my language—a “BS” artist. Those who knew Zvi Goffer for more than a few months understood his tendency to boast. We took what he said with a grain of salt. That is markedly different than being a knowing conspirator in a serial insider trading scheme. Zvi actively and deliberately misled me and numerous others (including dozens of people at his own firm) about the “source” of his information. He would say things like: “My friend’s friend is a portfolio manager at Hedge Fund X and he is hearing so and so” or “My SAC guy is telling me Y.” These were common refrains. The origins of most of Zvi’s calls weren’t even capable of being identified.

I suspect that the jury’s analysis centered on whether or not I was “tipped” by Zvi Goffer. But as we know, “tips” are not illegal. Tips where the tippee knows that the information is material, nonpublic, and acquired in breach of a fiduciary duty for some pecuniary benefit—that is what is illegal.

Nothing in Zvi’s history put me on notice that he was actually involved in an active knowing breach. Instead, he appeared to be just relaying or repeating rumors or research from others. There are whole industries and websites, blogs, other media and analyst research dedicated to these areas of trading. The law has gone from “knowledge” to a more subjective “should have known” to now, in this case, a “could have known” standard. As my attorney Mr. Sommer has spoken about, we traded over 347 stocks together during the time frame in question. Of the 100 or so “calls” Zvi relayed prior to and after 3Com, I probably lost money on ninety-seven of them.

Once we became partners at Incremental, actually working together, almost a year after 3Com took place, I was able to observe Zvi on an everyday basis. I read the riot act to Zvi. I told him that I would have a zero-tolerance policy for any moral or ethical breaches. There is a reason why informant after informant could not point to a single transgression of mine. You can be certain that neither coincidence nor luck had anything to do with that. Based on the number of informants and wiretaps and tremendous resources exerted, it didn’t happen for want of looking.

And as for the jury, I sincerely believe these types of cases are too complex. This is not murder, grand theft auto, or a bar brawl. The issues here are too sophisticated, the laws too vague and ill-defined—intentionally so, I might add—and the elements too specialized to be interpreted and analyzed by laymen. They are more like patent cases, which the law is beginning to recognize are incapable of being adjudicated by a jury and therefore better suited to be heard by a judge.

Over the last two years, my life has been summarily destroyed. Everything I’ve ever worked or studied for has been wiped out. Everything. The firm I built for two years, working eighteen hours a day and investing most of my net worth, is wiped out. Professionally and personally, my reputation has been ruined. I am bankrupt and about to lose my freedom. Starting over my life as a felon, in my forties, with over a million dollars in debt, scares me—but not being there as a father or husband when my family needs me is what truly terrifies me.

I think your honor presided in a fair manner over the trial and I want to thank you for treating my family and me with respect throughout this process.

I understand the rules of the system. And I was fully aware that turning down the government’s probation offer and submitting myself to the verdict of a jury engendered certain risks. The fact the jury rendered the decision they did means I have to be punished. I stand here ready to accept your honor’s sentencing decision.

I believe in redemption, and will one day make it right, as a husband and father, as a friend and a son, for those who have sacrificed for me.

Thank you, your honor.

I’ll be very brief, Your Honor.

Over the past two years, I have had the opportunity—privately—to express my feelings to my family and friends who have supported me throughout this difficult period in my life. So I won’t do that now.

Today, I would like to thank the Court for presiding over my trial in a fair manner and treating me and my family with respect throughout the process. When I chose to go to trial, I was fully aware of the risk that a jury would find me guilty, and now I am ready to accept the consequences of that decision.

I believe in redemption and one day hope to make it right, as a husband, father, son, and friend for those who have stood by my side and sacrificed for me. Thank you.

In retrospect, I should have released the text of the statement to the media, but Sommer and Moe were against that. I believe this was ultimately bad advice, as some journalists reported that I had stood and “accepted the consequences of [my guilt],” which is false and incomplete. It felt like the final dagger thrust. The reporting on my trial had involved numerous mistakes. There had even been stories saying that I had worked with Raj at Galleon. So many things were wrong, but they were out there now, and could hurt my reputation for years to come.

After my statement, I sat down and looked at Moe. He mustered a smile, but I could tell his heart wasn’t in it. He had been here before.

For Moe, sentencing was never enjoyable, even when he was standing with the government on the winning side. There is something about sitting in judgment of one’s fellow human beings that weighs heavily. Perhaps it should. Moe had been a lead prosecutor in the Ronell Wilson murder trial, in which Wilson was convicted of killing two undercover New York police officers on Staten Island back in 2003. Moe wrote to then US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, arguing that life in prison was sufficient punishment for Wilson. Gonzales told Moe to seek the death penalty or resign immediately from his job.

After my statement, he asked the prosecution if I was of “a different caliber” than the other defendants. They said I was, and the “least culpable.” Over a hundred letters of support had been offered for me—“the most I’d ever seen for a defendant,” Sullivan observed. He also conceded that my verdict had probably been a “close call,” and one that “could have gone either way.” But he also said I should have known better than to get mixed up with my codefendants.

Then, for a moment, he said nothing more. This was it. I knew the sentence would come next.

I was given thirty months, followed by three years’ probation. It was basically the same sentence received by Nu, who had made more than $1 million, used a prepaid phone, written cover-up emails, and doled out illegal cash.

Sullivan stood and exited the courtroom. The government prosecutors grabbed their Redweld folders and headed for the doors. I knew that Moe and Sommer’s promises to file an immediate appeal were sincere—it was par for the course, after all, and more work for them. In a daze, I turned around and saw my poor parents, my father red in the face, struggling with tears, as well as my mom, who remained impressively strong-looking, considering her broken heart. Lisa was surprisingly stoic—jaw clenched, glassy-eyed. She was the one I hugged first. I needed that strength to face what I knew awaited me outside—the cameras, the klieg lights, the microphones.

“Mr. Kimelman, Mr. Kimelman! Over here, over here! Do you have anything to say about the decision?”

Looking straight ahead, believing that my head was held high, with Lisa by my side, I’d officially crossed over. I had become a convict. There was nothing more to say. That was it, my two-year wait was officially over. I was going away.

There were forms to fill out, and interviews with psychiatrists, doctors, the media, and representatives from the Bureau of Prisons. I was also occupied with legal matters for my appeal and lots of goodbyes, capped off by a positively funereal “going away party” at a dive Irish bar near Times Square. As I shared my last drink with friends, their stories about careers and families echoed in my mind. As my life would disintegrate, as I would be trapped in a new hellish limbo, the larger world would keep spinning.

A couple of days after my sentencing, and two months before I had to surrender myself to federal authorities at a prison in central Pennsylvania, Peter Lattman from the New York Times called me up. He said he was writing a story on me and requested an interview. I was hesitant, but also did my due diligence. Lattman, a seasoned, savvy, and serious journalist, struck me as someone I could really talk to. I mean, what was the worst that could happen: He writes a scathing piece and makes me look bad—me, whose face had just been on every major news network in the United States and beyond, beneath the all-capped word: GUILTY! I’d tossed the dice over much bigger things in my day, including my very own freedom; this one seemed about as harmless as could be.

As I learned writing this book, it’s as much about what you leave out of a story as what you decide to put in—and this was clearly the case with the Lattman article. Sommer was firmly against it, believing all media was bad media, but Moe, to a degree, felt that humanizing the so-called “beast” might not be a bad thing, especially in light of what the federal prosecutors and the FBI had done to make me look like a monster.

Lattman’s article made the rounds. Some of the reactions were expected, others were definitely not. Lisa, at least, got great exposure—mostly because of her flattering picture. Long red hair, curvy body in a clingy dark dress, and porcelain skin have a way of piquing a interest. Suddenly “when does Kimelman report” became the question du jour, as the underlying tenor was “Perhaps poor Mrs. Kimelman will need some company,” as at least one FBI agent reportedly noted.

Preet himself said he was making the article mandatory reading for all Assistant US Attorneys, so they would understand and appreciate the power they have and the lives they can impact.

That last line of mine in Lattman’s article is one of the truest, most painful things I have ever said, let alone thought. “It’s the kids that’ll kill you.” Concern for my children was all that went through my head as I sat in the back yard, waiting to report. It stayed with me through the long quiet hours, the days and nights, the weeks rolling into months, lying on my cramped prison bunk, hands behind my head, staring at the peeling ceiling. And it stays with me now, three years on, a convicted felon but a free man.

In the article, Lattman mentioned that we still had yet to tell the kids. Looking back, I’m not even sure when exactly we told them. It was such an emotional time. Maybe it was that October, right after the sentencing, or closer to “departure time,” in December, when Lisa and I sat down on Cam’s toy-cluttered floor and finally talked to him and to Syl about it. (Phin was simply too young to understand, and too disruptive.) Among the Tyco trucks, G. I. Joes, and stuffed animals, I tried to explain to my children that, in life, we are held responsible for the things we do, and sometimes for things our friends do. I said it’s important to surround yourself with good people. I explained that Daddy had chosen some of his friends poorly, and they had done some bad things. Maybe not very bad. They didn’t hurt anyone, or kill anyone. But they did cheat at the game we were playing, ignoring the agreed-to rules. And because I was their partner, I had also been held responsible for the things they’d done. So now—I told them—I have to go away … to a prison camp. I will probably be gone about a year. But I will be back, and life will be normal again. Mom will be here, Grandma and Grandpa, and Chris (Lisa’s sous chef, who became a true friend to our kids), Brett (another Iona grad and occasional prep chef), and Annette (or “Netta,” our Czech babysitter). All of them will be here. And you can call Daddy and talk to him on the phone every night, and we can write letters … and … And there was a lump of pain in my throat the size of a baseball, which no amount of swallowing would get rid of.

I don’t know how I got through that without breaking down and bawling. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to say or explain to anyone, ever. It was also hard to process their looks of childish confusion. The gently furrowed brows. The utterly innocent frowns. They did not cry at the time—they were, I think, still processing—but they were clearly saddened.

I encouraged them to ask questions, as Sylvie’s therapist had suggested. (And let’s be clear: the only reason Syl ever needed to start seeing a therapist was because of my arrest, trial, and subsequent incarceration. That’s on me.)

As it turned out, the kids’ questions would come later, in the following weeks. They were heartbreakingly simple, Cam’s especially. “Can you explain why you have to go?” or “Why can’t you just stay with us and be my dad?” or even just “Why?”

The more challenging questions came from Syl: “If you didn’t do anything wrong, then why do you have to go to this … camp?”

Talk about a rock and a hard place. Her queries forced me to explain the difference between “I didn’t do anything wrong” and “I did something that was later ruled illegal.” That can be a lot for a kid to try to understand.

Again and again, as I spoke with my children, I found myself going back to an old refrain.

“I did something wrong because I chose bad partners. I knew they weren’t nice people, but I went into business with them anyway because I thought they could make me money. That’s called ‘greed,’ and it’s something I hope you won’t fully understand for a little while.”

I might have told them what Lou Mannheim told Bud Fox in the movie Wall Street: “The main thing about money, Bud, is that it makes you do things you don’t want to do.”

Looking into their confused eyes, it finally crystallized for me in a way that pride and stubbornness hadn’t allowed it to in the previous two years while I agonized over the decision to fight or fold. In this waking nightmare, the dark alleys were mostly of my own making.

It would now fall entirely to me to walk out of them on my own, and make sure my children had a father when this was all over.

* During my trial, the government played a wiretap featuring Karpel and Zvi and didn’t even bother to notify Karpel that he was going to be publicly outed as an informant beforehand. Karpel, a married father of three like me, read the news in the paper like everyone else, and then hung himself in his office. The next morning in court when Sommer asked AUSA’s Fish and Tarlowe whether they were aware of Karpel’s suicide, Fish shrugged his shoulders dismissively and snickered, “Not my witness”, before resuming small talk with Tarlowe.

* At trial, the only witness the government had that was able to link me in any way to the 3Com trade was Dave Plate, who testified that he thought I might have been in a crowded bar during happy hour and heard Zvi discussing the trade. On cross exam, Plate admitted he wasn’t sure I was even present.